Grossmont College Are Addicts Morally Responsible Paper

Write a 750-1250 word (max) argumentative essay on the material from Modules 4-7

Assignment: Write a 750-1250 word (3-5 pages double spaced) thesis defense essay that addresses one of the below questions:  1. Given what we know about the nature of self-control, to what extent, if any, are addicts morally responsible? (Module 4)  2. Critically asses the argument that we don’t have free will based on Libet’s experimental results. (Module 5)  3. To what extent, if any, are psychopaths morally responsible? (Module 5)  4. Critically asses the traditional theory of self-deception or the deflationary theory of self-deception. (Module 6)  5. To what extent, if any, does neuroscientific knowledge support either moral revisionism or moral eliminativism? (Module 7)  6. Choose some other topic from Modules 4-7. (If you choose this option I recommend, but do not require, that you run your topic by me.)  Note: The topics above are quite broad. You are both allowed and encouraged to focus more narrowly.  2 Part of the challenge of this assignment involves setting yourself a narrow and well-defined task that you can accomplish in the allotted word limit (don’t bite off more than you can chew). Some advice: Make an outline with a clear structure. Focus on clearly setting up the issue, making sure to define key terms and concepts. Be sure to be charitable to the authors that you discuss (that is, give their views the most plausible, as opposed to the least plausible, interpretation). Strive for clarity (read the Jim Pryor stuff above!).   PHI 320
Bioethics
Dr. Andrew Khoury
Module 4: Self-Control and its Pathologies
2. The Self of Self-Control
• If we are composed of a variety of different modules
and mechanisms, how is it that our behavior is
relatively unified? How do these modules coordinate
so as to give rise to goal-directed behavior?
• How does this coordination work in normal action?
• How is it impaired in pathological action?
3. The Coordination Problem
• First pass at answering the coordination problem:
• Evolution has already selected for coordinated
modules, so the problem is a non-problem.
• It’s true that there is a minimal kind of
unity/coordination that we have in virtue of the kinds of
creatures that we are.
• But there is a more robust sense of unity that we can
develop and that we can lack. This is self-control.
4. Self-Control
• Consider a loss of self-control:
• Suppose that I order another drink when I know that I really
shouldn’t.
• It’s not as if I am being controlled by someone else.
• I’m still acting on a desire that is mine, so in that sense it’s
still me in the driver’s seat.
• So what’s going on?
• Well, I’m acting on a desire that, in some sense, I don’t
endorse.
• My action does not cohere well with my deepest desires
and values.
• Self-control, then, consists in acting on one’s endorsed
values.
5. Self-Control
•
Why do we care about self-control?
•
•
It’s instrumentally valuable: When I’m able to do what I most value, then it’s
much more likely that I’ll be able to achieve my ends.
Consider the loss of self-control involved in utilization behavior or imitation
behavior.
•
•
•
Patients suffering from these disorders have a very impaired ability to pursue
the kind of life they want to pursue.
Difficulty in carrying our plans, keeping promises, maintaining relationships,
etc.
This, and other losses of self-control such as ADHD, may be explained by an
impairment of inhibitory function.
•
•
E.g. people without utilization disorder have the same initial automatic
response to an object, it’s just that this response gets inhibited in the
normally functioning person.
So self-control is important because it’s necessary to live an authentic life.
6. Developing Self-Control
• Self-control is a developed skill
• Mischel’s delayed gratification test in four year olds (e.g.
one marshmallow now, or two later).
• Ability to delay gratification at age four is predictive of
“academic success, social competence, attentiveness,
concentration, ability to form and execute plans” (p. 204).
• Not simply a matter of will power, but the skill of distracting
oneself (e.g. better to focus on something other than the
positive attributes of the delayed reward).
7. Self-Control and Ego
Depletion
•
Addiction-as-irresistible-desire hypothesis: addiction consists in the
presence of an irresistible desire.
•
•
On this view people suffering from addiction are subject to a coercive
force that just happens to be internal but is no less coercive for that
reason.
Problems:
•
It just doesn’t seem that addictive desires are literally irresistible.
•
•
•
•
People do quit for shorter and longer durations.
Consumption is price sensitive.
Some addicts abstain so as to lower their tolerance.
So addicts are sometimes able to resist; there is some degree of control
expressed over addictive desires.
8. Self-Control and Ego
Depletion
• So is addiction just an excuse? Are addicts fully autonomous
and free with respect to their addictive desires?
• No
• Phenomenological experience
• If addiction did not involve some loss of autonomy, then
we’d be hard pressed to explain why addicts frequently act
against what they care most about.
• So the truth seems to be somewhere in between these two
poles.
9. The Ego-Depletion
Hypothesis
• Temporal pattern of addiction: relatively easy to resist addictive desires
in the short-term, very hard in the long-term.
• Example ego-depletion study: Group 1 engaged in a self-control task
(e.g. must only eat radishes in the presence of freshly baked cookies,
watching a funny video while keeping a straight face). Group 2
engaged in a taxing task but one that doesn’t require self-control (e.g.
multiplying three digit numbers). Both groups then did a task that
requires exercising self-control (e.g. squeezing a hand grip, keeping a
hand in ice water). It was found that the group who had done the
previous self-control task, Group 1, fared worse on the second selfcontrol task.
• Hypothesis: Self-control is a finite resource that can be depleted.
• The muscle model of self-regulation; gets weaker as we use it,
needs rest, gets stronger with repeated training.
10. The Ego Depletion
Hypothesis
• Underlying mechanisms?
• fMRI and PET scans show that activity in the anterior
cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex are associated with
exercises of self-control.
• Self-control is sensitive to glucose levels to a far greater
extent than automatic processes: “Gailliot et al . note the
irony that dieters tend to lower their blood glucose, thereby
reducing their own self-control resources” (p. 211).
11. The Ego Depletion
Hypothesis
• So the ego-depletion hypothesis seems to explain the
temporal pattern of addiction: addictive desires can be
resisted in the short-term, until the reserves of will-power are
gone, at which point the person succumbs to the desire. Then
the reserves of control are replenished and the cycle starts
over.
• Does the ego-depletion hypothesis predict that all addicts will
inevitably relapse?
• No, because self-control is depleted only in the face of the
persisting addictive desire. If the presence of the desire can
be mitigated, by, say, eliminating cues for the desire (e.g.
people or places associated with consumption), then the
resource of self-control isn’t depleted.
12. The Ego Depletion
Hypothesis
• EDH can explain:
• Other pathologies of self-control like OCD.
• Same temporal pattern
• Best strategy is distraction
• Ordinary loss of self-control
13. Successful resistance
• Autonomy depends on the environment:
• Developmental environment (we become autonomous only if the
environment in which we grow up provides opportunities to
practice self-control)
• Current environment (opportunities for distraction or removing cues
for strong desires we don’t endorse)
• Self-binding techniques
• Time locks on liquor cabinets
• Telling friends that we’re on a diet (raises the cost of breaking the
diet)
• Disulfiram (makes alcohol cause severe nausea)
• Note that these techniques don’t consist in the exercise of extra willpower, they consist in environmental alterations so that extra willpower isn’t necessary.
14. Addiction and responsibility
• Two typical views:
• Addiction is no excuse
• But clearly addicts do have reduced autonomy.
• Addiction is a total excuse
• But addicts can do things to resist their addictive desires.
• So the truth seems to be in the middle somewhere: the
responsibility of addicts is reduced but not eliminated.
• We can expect addicts to resist in the short term, and to take
reasonable steps to appropriately alter their environment so
that longer term failure is less likely (if the necessary external
resources are available).
15. Addiction and responsibility
•
For some addicts, it may be literally impossible for them to resist taking the
drug when it is available and when their self-control resources are depleted.
But they can do things to ensure that they don’t find themselves in such
circumstances.
•
•
•
Note that this may itself require external resources such as money; a
wealthy person may be able to self-bind by going to an expensive
treatment center.
Additionally, the costs of these environmental changes may be very high
(e.g. severing relationships with people who trigger the desire) and in
some cases unreasonably so (e.g. a person whose use is a response to
stress, and who is stressed because she must work two full-time jobs to
make ends meet).
Notice that if we think the mind is contained within the skull, then it is easy to
overemphasize the importance of will-power in resisting addiction. However, if
we take the extended mind hypothesis seriously, we are more likely to
recognize the importance of environmental factors in exercising self-control.
16.
• That concludes the lecture!
PHI 320
Bioethics
Dr. Andrew Khoury
Module 5: The Neuroscience of Free Will
2. Free will: some terms
• Determinism: The view that all events, including peoples’
actions and thoughts, are determined such that they had to
occur given the past state of the world and the laws of nature.
On this view, given the past state of the world and the laws of
nature there is only one physically possible future.
• Indeterminism: The rejection of determinism. On this view, not
all events are determined.
• Compatibilism: The view that free will and moral responsibility
are compatible with determinism.
• Incompatibilism: The view that free will and moral
responsibility are incompatible with determinism.
3. Scientists on free will
• Many scientists have boldly claimed that science proves that
“free will is just an illusion”.
• This is because they think that science has shown that
human thought and action is the result of deterministic
processes (e.g. heredity and environment),
• and they unreflectively assume that incompatibilism is true.
• “Of all the claims of scientists, this is the one that probably
annoys philosophers the most. Not because they regard it as
wrong—most do, but some actually agree with the claim—but
because it is made in apparent ignorance of literally
thousands of years of debate on the question of whether free
will is compatible with causal determinism” (Levy, p. 223).
4. The philosophical debate
on free will
• Most contemporary philosophers are compatibilists (about 60%
according to this survey: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl).
• Why do they think compatibilism is true?
• According to one influential argument the intuition that
incompatibilism is right is due to a conflation of coercion with
causation.
• If I am coerced to do something (e.g. you’ve got a gun to my head)
then I don’t act freely. But the problem isn’t that I’ve been
deterministically caused to act, it’s that I’ve been deterministically
caused to act against my desires. Determinism doesn’t generally
imply that we act against our desires. It just implies that our desires
are themselves determined, but so what? Even if determinism is
true I can still do what I most want to do, and be happy being the
kind of person that I am.
5. The contemporary debate
In the contemporary debate incompatibilists typically make one of two arguments:
The Leeway Argument:
•
•
•
Freedom and responsibility require the ability to do otherwise.
If determinism is true, then no one can do otherwise.
Therefore, determinism is incompatible with freedom and responsibility.
The Source-hood Argument:
•
•
•
•
Freedom and responsibility requires being the proper source of one’s actions.
If determinism is true, then no one is the proper source of their actions.
Therefore, determinism is incompatible with freedom and responsibility.
[Note, as Hume emphasized, that it’s not clear how indeterminism is supposed to
help us get free will. If our actions are indeterministic (say, ultimately due to
quantum indeterminacies), then what we end up doing is just a matter of random
chance and random acts are not freely controlled.]
6. The contemporary debate
cont.
• The soundness of both arguments is hotly debated. There are
compatibilists who argue that determinism is compatible with
the ability to do otherwise and compatibilists who argue that
determinism is compatible with sourcehood.
• The point is that scientists cannot uncontroversially claim that
the truth of determinism clearly shows that free will is an
illusion.
• Still, neuroscience may well shed light on free will in more
subtle ways.
7. Consciousness and Free
Will
• Some recent results in neuroscience suggest that we do not
consciously cause our actions (either deterministically or
indeterministically), and this may be thought to threaten free
will.
• E.g. many influential compatibilist accounts hold that an act
is free only if it is consciously caused).
• The threat “Consciousness plays no direct role in decisionmaking or volition. We do not consciously decide or
consciously initiate action” (Levy, p. 226).
8. Libet’s experiment
• Subjects were told to flex their wrist whenever they wanted to.
Their readiness potential (RP) in the brain was measured. They
were also told to note the time at which they first became aware
of their wish to move their wrist.
• The results were that the RP preceded the conscious awareness
of the wish by about 400 milliseconds. In effect, the scientists
could “see” the initiation of the action before the subject could.
• Many have claimed that Libet’s experiment has shown that free
will does not exist. We do not consciously initiate actions, rather
our consciousness is informed of sub-personal processes
already underway. And because we are our consciousness, it is
not us making the decisions and so we can’t be held responsible
for them.
9. Wegner
•
•
•
The phenomenal will (our experience of causing an action) vs the empirical will (the
actual sub-personal causal mechanisms).
Wenger argues that we erroneously think that we have free will because we think that
the phenomenal will causes our actions. But, he argues, the phenomenal will is caused
by the empirical will. The empirical will causes the action and also causes a mental
preview of the action. We mistake this mental preview (the phenomenal will) for the
actual cause when three conditions are met: priority, consistency, exclusivity.
Evidence: double dissociation.
•
•
Empirical will (action) without phenomenal will (experience of action): Table turning,
Ouija board. Because there are other people involved, the exclusivity principle is not
satisfied and so the actual action (the empirical will) doesn’t give rise to a conscious
experience of action (the phenomenal will).
Phenomenal will (experience of action) without empirical will (action): in
experimental settings subjects could be primed to over attribute their own
contribution to an action.
10. Objections
Objections to Libet:
•
•
•
Perhaps “big picture” decisions are consciously made (e.g. the decision to
comply with Libet’s experiment), and we let sub-personal mechanisms carry
out the derivative actions (e.g. when we flick the wrist). (Double)
Libet may be wrong to identify the subject’s intention with their subjective
report of their awareness of the decision. (Mele)
It may be wrong to think that there is any precise moment that something
enters consciousness, and so it may be problematic to claim that there is
evidence of the initiation of action before it enters consciousness. (Dennett)
Objections to Wegner:
•
Just because there is a double dissociation does not mean we should
conclude that free will is an illusion. Perception is subject to double
dissociation but we don’t conclude that perception is generally unreliable or
illusory. (Nahmias)
11. How strong are these
objections?
• “I suspect they are (at minimum) successful in pointing out severe
problems in their arguments and experimental designs. Neither
has demonstrated, anywhere near conclusively, that
consciousness does not initiate action or make decisions.
However, though these philosophers have won this battle, I
suspect they will lose the war: consciousness does not, in fact,
play the kind of role in action that Libet and Wegner believe to be
required in order for us to be morally responsible. We should
therefore get on with assessing whether, and how, moral
responsibility might be compatible with the finding that
consciousness does not initiate actions or make decisions” (Levy,
p. 231).
12. Consciousness and Moral
Responsibility
• Is consciousness required for moral responsibility?
• Seems so:
• The legal doctrine of mens rea (guilty mind): intentionally >
recklessly > negligently
• Automatism: Ken Parks. The best explanation of the wide
intuition that he was not responsible is that he was
sleepwalking, that is, he was not consciously aware of his
murderous actions.
•
•
13. Why does consciousness
matter?
Libet and Wegner think that consciousness is required for control. If there
is a time lag between the initiation of action and our conscious awareness
of it, then we are not consciously controlling the action.
Why think this is true?
•
(a) Because they identify the self with the experience of the self:
consciousness.
•
•
Response: That’s too narrow a conception of the self. The self is
composed of many sub-personal mechanisms (e.g. the cause of the
action is still our beliefs and desires).
(b) If our actions are caused by beliefs and desires of which we are
unaware, then we are passive with respect to our action. But control
requires that we be active with respect to our actions. It requires the
ability to consciously intervene in these processes: the decision
constraint.
•
Libet and Wegner argue that the decision constraint is never
satisfied. Extant philosophical responses to them argue that its
satisfaction is consistent with the experimental results.
14. But is the decision
constraint true?
• Levy is skeptical that the decision constraint is a true
requirement for freedom and responsibility.
• Example: Thinking about whether or not to move out of state
for a job. There are pros and cons. How do we decide?
• We could weigh the reasons: We could try to determine
how strong the reasons for and against actually are.
• We could weight the reasons: We could decide to actively
give the reasons a particular force (or alter their antecedent
weight).
• Which do you think better describes your actual process of
decision making?
15. Weighing and Weighting
• Levy thinks that the decision constraint amounts to the claim that
control requires the ability to weight reasons. And, he thinks, in
ordinary decision-making we weigh reasons not weight them:
“weighting a reason is assigning a weight to a consideration for no
reason at all” (p. 236). This would be arbitrary and irrational, not
something that enhances control.
• Freedom and control instead requires the (sometimes passive and
sub-personal) ability to weigh reasons. And once we see this, the
possibility that consciousness does not play an active role in
decision-making is much less worrisome.
• To demand that we must be able to intervene in our decision-
making processes is to demand that we control our exercises of
control. And if that’s required, then presumably we must be able to
control that, and so on. But that’s impossible.
•
16. Does consciousness
matter then?
If consciousness doesn’t matter in the way specified by the decision constraint,
then how does it matter?
•
•
•
•
•
E.g. We do think that Ken Parks is excused because he was not conscious at
the time of action.
Appeal to a deep-self conception of freedom and responsibility: We are
responsible for acts that are expressions of what we care about. Actions that are
conscious typically do express what we care about.
Why is this true?
Consciousness is a global workspace in the sense that it facilitates the transfer of
information between otherwise relatively isolated sub-personal mechanisms. So
when decisions are made consciously they are done in light of more information
than when done solely from sub-personal mechanisms. So the quality of the
decision is, ceteris paribus, higher and the action is more likely to express the
totality of what matters to the agent.
Parks, in his unconscious state, was acting from some sup-personal mechanisms
operating in relative isolation and so his action does not necessarily express his
deep self and so he is not (at least not fully) responsible.
17. Knowledge and control
• Even though the arguments of Libet and Wegner fail (or, at least,
do not clearly succeed), there may be other ways in which
neuroscience can fruitfully inform our thinking about freedom and
responsibility.
• Most philosophers think that freedom and moral responsibility
requires the satisfaction of two conditions:
• An epistemic condition (e.g. “I didn’t know” is often a good
excuse)
• A control condition (e.g. “I couldn’t help it” is often a good
excuse)
• Neuroscience can offer insight into the extent to which these
conditions are met in particular pathologies.
18. The epistemic condition
The Moral/Conventional distinction
•
Conventional transgressions: rule or authority dependent.
•
•
•
•
Would it still be wrong to chew gum in the classroom if the teacher said it
would be ok? No.
Moral transgressions: not rule or authority dependent.
•
•
•
Would it be wrong to chew gum in the classroom? Yes.
Would it be wrong to hit another child? Yes.
Would it still be wrong if the teacher said it was ok? Yes, it would still be
wrong.
Children generally can make this distinction at about 3 years of age, and view
moral transgressions as much more serious than conventional transgressions.
The ability to make this distinction is, presumably, a necessary condition of
attaining moral knowledge.
19. Psychopaths
• Studies have shown that psychopaths are not able to make
this distinction: they think all transgressions are conventional.
• Problem with the amygdala resulting in impaired
representation of emotions in others.
• Given that we think that the punishment for conventional
transgressions should be relatively minor (e.g. fines), and
psychopaths think that all transgressions are conventional,
Levy thinks they have severely diminished responsibility for
their actions.
20. The control condition
•
Impulse control disorders
•
•
•
•
Tourette’s syndrome (TS): experience persistent urge to perform, say
a tic, or some other action (shouting of an obscenity).
Suffers from such disorders are, Levy argues, not responsible because
the persistent presence of the (ego dystonic) desire effectively
guarantees that their store of self-control will be exhausted and they will
act on the desire. For TS, the abnormality consists primarily in the
abnormal desire, the pathway from desire to action is normal.
Utilization behavior, on the other hand, may be the opposite: normal
urges to use an object we recognize but an inability to inhibit the urge.
In these cases responsibility is reduced because the actions don’t
express what the agent most values.
21. Summing up
• So neuroscience does not uncontroversially prove that free
will is just an illusion.
• But nor is it irrelevant to questions of freedom and
responsibility.
• It can help us develop a more nuanced view of who is and
who isn’t free and responsible.
• That concludes the lecture!
PHI 320
Bioethics
Dr. Andrew Khoury
Module 6: Self-Deception
2. Self-deception
• The phenomenon of self-deception has long interested
philosophers.
• How and why do people believe what they clearly
have sufficient evidence to deny?
• Example: The man who believes that his wife is
faithful despite a wealth of evidence to contrary.
• (Note that in self-deception, the deceived belief is
typically one that the person wants to believe.)
3. Theories of self-deception
• In cases of self-deception it is natural to say that the person
really “knows at some level” or something similar.
• Traditional philosophical theories of self-deception take this
literally: They ascribe the denied belief to the person; selfdeception involves contradictory beliefs.
• Most of us do have contradictory beliefs, but the typical
explanation is that the contradiction is not obvious:
• Example: I have a friend who thinks that retributive theories of
punishment are barbaric. But, when I asked him whether he
would prefer that karma existed, he says yes.
• But here, the contradiction is not so obvious.
3. Theories of self-deception
cont.
• The puzzling aspect of self-deception is to explain the
contradictory beliefs when the contradiction is clear as day.
• The self-deceived man believes “my wife is faithful” despite
believing “she frequently stays out late, is constantly receiving
texts and hides her phone from me, has been distant lately,
there was a tie that wasn’t mine in the backseat of her car,
etc.”
• How do we explain this?
5. Theories of self-deception
cont.
• On the traditional theory of self-deception, self-deception
involves (a) contradictory beliefs (b) brought about
intentionally.
• Puzzle: But how could one succeed in lying to oneself,
doesn’t lying entail knowledge of the truth?
• Defenders of the traditional theory appeal to different and
isolated levels of awareness.
• Perhaps the cuckolded man unconsciously believes that his
wife is having an affair while consciously believing that she
is faithful.
6. Theories of self-deception
cont.
• Proponents of deflationary accounts (such as Mele) have,
appealing to Occam’s razor, criticized the traditional account
on the grounds that it is too demanding in the sense that it
invokes a lot of mental machinery: that the mind is partitioned
such that the contradictory beliefs are isolated from one
another but that both can motivate behavior (e.g. the sincere
assertion of the deceived belief, and the rationalizations of the
evidence).
• Deflationary accounts deny the two conditions that give rise to
the complex explanatory machinery: (a) the contradictory
belief requirement and (b) the intentionality requirement.
• (So we don’t need to explain the puzzle of how a person
could successfully lie to themselves or how they can hold
contradictory beliefs).
7. Theories of self-deception
cont.
• Deflationists instead appeal to “motivationally biased belief
acquisition mechanisms.”
• These are mechanisms of belief acquisition that are, roughly,
quick, automatic, and unconscious:
• For example, we tend to weigh evidence more heavily
when it is
• vivid
• recent
• confirms, rather than disconfirms, a hypothesis
• And when a person is motivated to have a particular belief,
this can activate these biases (e.g. the conspiracy theorist
who views any evidence against the theory as more evidence
of a cover-up).
8. Theories of self-deception
cont.
• On this view, then, self-deception need not be intentional nor must it
involve contradictory beliefs. The biases operate below the conscious
level so there is no intentional deception going on, and there are no
contradictory beliefs because the biases prevent the person from
inferring the belief from the evidence (because the bias discounts the
evidence).
• Defenders of the deflationary account argue that their account is
simpler than the traditional account and can explain the data at least
as well.
• If there were a data point that could not be explained, then the
deflationary account would be in trouble. This would involve a case in
which the subject either clearly brought about the deception
intentionally or in which the subject clearly has contradictory beliefs.
• Levy argues that neuroscience has shown there to be cases of the
second kind: cases involving contradictory beliefs.
9. Anosognosia and selfdeception
• Anosognosia: People who have an illness but sincerely deny
that they do.
• Levy focuses on anosognosia for hemiplegia: people who are
partially paralyzed but deny that they are.
• Paralysis is usually due to stroke or brain injury (usually a
lesion on the right hemisphere).
• Usually involves paralysis on one side of the body, typically
the left side.
• Typically the hand or arm is paralyzed.
• Typically accompanied by unilateral neglect (failure to
properly process information on that side of the body).
10. cont.
• When asked to move the paralyzed part of their body
anosognosics will often refuse and offer rationalizations:
•
• “I have arthritis”
• “The doctor told me to rest my arm”
• “I’m tired”
• “I’m not accustomed to taking orders”
• “Left hands are always weaker” (p. 263)
Or they may even claim to have complied with the request
despite the fact that their limb remains motionless:
• “I am pointing my finger”
• “I am clapping”
11. cont.
• Motivational/Psychological explanation: This is a case of selfdeception. The truth is painful, so they engage in these
rationalizations.
• Problem: anosognosia seems to only occur when it is the
right hemisphere of the brain that is damaged giving rise to
paralysis on the left side. The motivational/psychological
explanation can’t explain this asymmetry. So, presumably,
there is a neurological component.
12. cont.
•
Ramachandran’s account: hemispherical specialization.
•
Left hemisphere (undamaged) creates a coherent narrative out of the
information available to it. It ignores small anomalies because it would be too
costly to check every one. The right hemisphere keeps the narrative in check
by flagging the bigger anomalies to bring to the agent’s attention.
•
•
•
There is independent evidence for such hemispherical specialization.
Extending this, Gazzaniga has argued that the left hemisphere has “an interpreter
module” which interprets the available motivational information. When it is cut off
from a source of motivational information it may confabulate.
This account seems able to explain the asymmetry of anosognosia.
•
When the right hemisphere is damaged it is not able to keep the “interpreter”
in check and so the left hemisphere is able to protect the person from the
painful knowledge of paralysis by simply ignoring that information.
13. cont.
•
•
Maybe this is right. Levy’s point is that the correct explanation will need
to appeal to both the neurological level and the
motivational/psychological level.
Why do we need the motivational/psychological explanation? Why not
just explain anosognosia in terms of some cognitive impairment such as
neglect, or delusion, or confusion: Perhaps sufferers simply do not
realize that they are paralyzed because they lack, say, normal
proprioceptive information about movement.
•
•
•
Problem: Too weak to explain the data.
If the explanation is neglect, then why do they ignore other sources of
information suggesting that they are paralyzed such as doctors,
friends, and their visual system?
The delusion/confusion explanation is problematized by the fact that
one anosognosic only learned of his paralysis when the left limb was
moved into the right side of his visual field.
14.
• So anosognosia needs a neurological explanation (to account
for asymmetry), but it also needs a motivational/psychological
explanation (because a purely neurological explanation is too
weak to explain the phenomena).
• That is, Levy argues that anosognosia is a neurologically
based form of self-deception: motivated denial of paralysis.
15.
It is a form of self-deception if three conditions are met:
• (1) Subjects believe that their limb is healthy.
• (2) Nevertheless they also have the simultaneous belief (or
strong suspicion) that their limb is significantly impaired and
they are profoundly disturbed by this belief (suspicion).
• (3) Condition (1) is satisfied because condition (2) is satisfied;
that is, subjects are motivated to form or retain the belief that
their limb is healthy because they have the concurrent belief
(suspicion) that it is significantly impaired and they are
disturbed by this belief (suspicion). [p. 269]
• Note that if this is right, then anosognosics are self-deceived
and do have contradictory beliefs. But (3) doesn’t necessarily
entail that (1) is brought about by (2) intentionally.
16.
• Why think (1) satisfied (that they believe their limb is healthy)?
• Experimental results:
• (a) when asked to lift a try with cups of water, non-anosognosic
hemiplegics place their right (non-paralyzed) hand under the center of
the tray. Anosognosics place their right hand on the right side of the
tray (and the tray, unsupported on the left side, falls to the ground).
• (b) when given the choice between a unimanual task (with a small
reward for success) or a bimanual task (with a larger reward for
success), non-anosognosic hemiplegics choose the unimanual task
while anosognosics opt for the bimanual task (that they are destined
to fail on).
• So it seems reasonable to attribute to them the belief that their limb is
healthy.
17.
•
•
•
•
Why think that (2) is satisfied (that they believe or suspect that their limb is impaired)?
Having a belief requires that the information be (a) represented in the brain and (b)
that it be available personally.
The fact that their limb is paralyzed is represented in their brains:
•
Vestibular stimulation: pouring cold water in their left ear temporarily resolves the
anosognosia and patients actually admit that they’ve been paralyzed all along (and
so, presumably, that information has been in their brain the whole time).
There is some low degree of personal availability of that information: availability in
forced-choice situations.
•
•
•
•
Same kind of availability as involved in blindsight: use of visual information in blind
patients.
Anosognosics typically have neglect. Some studies have shown that they can use
information in their neglected field (e.g. they prefer the non-burning house, even
though the burning portion is in their neglected side).
Reaction formation: Anosognosics will engage in denials of their paralysis with
such verve as to betray their belief (“though doth protest too much”: “yes, I tied my
shoes, I did it with both hands!” “My left arm is actually stronger than my right.”).
They also typically don’t try to attempt bimanual tasks.
So, Levy thinks, it’s reasonable to attribute to them the belief that their limb is
paralyzed.
18.
• What about condition (3)? Why think (1) is caused by (2)?
• Levy thinks we have to accept (3) because it alone can
explain anosognosia, extant theories are inadequate. (e.g.
why is it that anosognosics ignore doctors and friends telling
them that they are paralyzed?).
19.
• So anosognosia is both neurological and psychological:
• Hypothesis 1: Availability of the somosensory information is
neurologically impaired. The awareness is “dim” and so not
flagged by the (healthy) anomaly dectector.
• Hypothesis 2: Damage to the anomaly detector in the right
hemisphere results in a failure to “flag” the anomaly for the
interpreter module in the left hemisphere.
• Or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
20.
• If this is right, it spells some trouble for the deflationary
account and the traditional account is, to an extent, defended.
• And despite the fact that it is brain lesions in anosognosics
that give rise to the impairment in (i) the level of availability of
the information or (ii) a failure in the anomaly detector to flag
the information that conflicts with the agent’s other beliefs, it’s
probably not the case that a brain lesion is necessary for such
impairments. If so, then everyday self-deception may be
explained in a similar way.
• So results from neuroscience have shed light on the old
philosophical problem of self-deception.
• That concludes the lecture!
PHI 320
Bioethics
Dr. Andrew Khoury
Module 7: The Neuroscience of Ethics
2.
• Earlier in the course we applied our ethical judgments to new
possibilities opened up by neuroscientific knowledge (e.g. the
possibility of direct lie detection, altering memories, enhancing
cognition, etc.).
• But some make the argument that neuroscientific knowledge
gives us reason to be skeptical of our ethical judgments
themselves:
• (a) Revisionism: All moral theories but one are unjustified.
• (b) Eliminativism: All moral theories are unjustified.
3. Intuitions
• Proponents of these arguments hold that science reveals that
some or all moral intuitions are unjustified.
• An intuition is a spontaneous intellectual seeming.
• E.g. Is it morally permissible to torture an innocent person for fun?
What’s your intuition?
• Most have the intuition that such an action is wrong AND this is
thought to provide evidence that the action is in fact wrong.
• Some refer to intuitions as “gut feelings.”
• This is right insofar as there is an affective element in intuitions.
• But there is also a cognitive element.
•
4. Reflective equilibrium
Reflective equilibrium is the dominant methodology in moral philosophy.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
(1) We begin with some pre-theoretical intuitions (i.e. “the data”).
(2) We then try to come up with a moral principle that explains the truth of the
intuitions.
(3) We then test this principle against new cases to see if its implications accord or
clash with our intuitions.
(4) When conflicts arise, it is an open question whether we revise or reject the
principle or the intuition. We decide which on the basis of what seems most
intuitively plausible.
(5) We continue this process of seeking out and resolving conflict until there are no
more conflicts between principle and our intuitions.
(6) When we have done so we are in a state of reflective equilibrium.
Reflective equilibrium seeks to systematize, justify, and guide our moral intuitions.
Note that this method takes intuitions to have strong, though not absolute, evidential
weight.
5. Illustrated
• (1) Collect some pre-theoretical intuitions:
• “Torturing an innocent person for fun is wrong.”
• “If we could save a child from drowning though we’d ruin our suede
shoes, we must do so.”
• “It would be morally preferable to donate to an effective charity rather
than an ineffective one.”
• (2) Come up with a provisional moral principle that explains the truth of
the intuitions:
• Utilitarianism: The right action is the one that maximizes aggregate
happiness.
• (3) Test it against new cases:
• Suppose, in a particular case, it would maximize aggregate
happiness to punish an innocent person.
6. Cont.
• What does the provisional principle (utilitarianism) say?
• Yes, punishing the innocent would be morally right.
• What is your intuition about that case?
• No, that wouldn’t be right.
• Now, at step (4), we’ve got to revise or reject either the principle or this
particular intuition. We do so on the basis of which we are more
intuitively confident in.
• Utilitarians find the principle of utitlity to be so intuitive that they will
reject the intuition that it would be wrong in this case to punish the
innocent.
• Others, such as deontologists, think that intuition is stronger than the
principle of utility.
• So the method of reflective equilibrium assumes that intuitions are
reliable, if not infallible, guides to moral reality. The challenge from
neuroscience calls that assumption into doubt.
7. Greene’s challenge
• The Trolley Problem.
• Pattern of intuitive judgment: Yes in Normal Trolley Case,
No in Footbridge Case.
• Many philosophers take these intuitions seriously. Is there a
principle that explains this pattern? Maybe the Kantian
principle that we should never use people as a means?
• But most people say Yes in the Loop Case.
8.
• Greene’s hypothesis: Our intuitive judgments express the fact
that we are more adverse to personal violations than to
impersonal ones and this has an evolutionary explanation.
• Greene’s predictions: (1) Emotions will be more engaged
when people consider personal violations. (2) People who say
Yes in Footbridge (the minority) will take longer to make this
judgment.
• Predictions were confirmed.
• Arguable Normative upshot: Our intuitions in these cases, and
in general, are products of our evolutionary past rather than
reliable guides to a moral reality.
9. Haidt and the Social
Intuitionists Model (SIM) of
moral judgment
• Main idea: Moral judgements are produced by affective
responses (which either are or give rise to moral intuitions).
We then come up with post hoc rationalizations for these
judgments (confabulation). So our intuitions lack evidentiary
force.
• Evidence: moral dumbfounding
10. Haidt and SIM cont.
•
•
•
Haidt: “Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are travelling together in France
on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near
the beach. They decided that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love.
At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already
taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both
enjoy making love but decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special
secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do
you think about that, was it OK for them to make love?”
What’s your intuition?
Most people say that it’s wrong. Why?
•
•
•
Danger’s of inbreeding?
Someone will be hurt?
It seems there’s a plausible evolutionary explanation for the origin of these
judgments, but is this a good moral explanation of their truth?
11. The deflationary argument
• (1) Our moral theories, as well as our first-order judgments
and principles are all based, more or less directly, upon our
moral intuitions.
• (2) These theories, judgments and principles are justified only
insofar as our intuitions track genuinely moral features of the
world.
• (3) But our moral intuitions are the product of cognitive
mechanisms which evolved under non-moral selection
pressures, and therefore cannot be taken to track moral
features of the world; hence
• (4) Our moral theories, judgments and principles are
unjustified. (p. 293)
12.
Levy’s Response
•
•
•
(1) and (2) are relatively uncontroversial. The controversial premise is (3).
Why think (3) is true:
Option A: (3) is true because moral intuitions are produced by emotions/affective
responses.
•
•
•
Response: This rests on a faulty view of emotions according to which emotions
distort or impair rationality. But there is good reason to think that affective
responses are necessary for rationality: Damasio and the SMH (e.g. Iowa
Gambling Test).
Rather than discounting the judgments that display emotional activation (e.g. the
judgment that it would be wrong to push the fat man off the bridge), perhaps we
should discount the judgement of those who say that that would be permissible.
Ventromedial Patients (VM) consistently have utilitarian judgments. VM patients
are bad at practical reasoning, and so perhaps this gives us reason to think that
their moral judgments are impaired as well.
13. Moral Constructivism
•
Option B: (3) is true because moral intuitions result from our evolutionary
past.
•
•
•
Response: This assumes the metaethical view that moral facts are
non-natural and independent of our responses and interests (e.g.
Platonism, Divine Command Theory).
Levy appeals to the metaethical view called moral constructivism.
According this view, moral facts are composed of or constructed out
of “the stances, attitudes, conventions or other states or products of
human beings” (p. 300).
Roughly, the idea is that morality is itself composed of (some,
perhaps idealized, subset) our moral practices. And since our moral
intuitions are part of this practice, then there’s not good reason to
think that our moral intuitions, in general, get it wrong (note: this is
consistent with thinking that they are sometimes mistaken).
14. Moral Contructivism cont.
• On this view it is consistent to think that (a) our moral
practices arose because a disposition to reward cooperation
and punish free-riders had adaptive value and (b) that our
moral practices are real and have value.
• Or it may be that (a) we value benevolence because concern
for conspecifics has adaptive value because, in our
evolutionary past, most conspecifics were relatives and (b)
that benevolence has genuine value.
• In either case, the evolutionary explanation of our moral
practices is not necessarily a debunking explanation.
15.
•
Option C: (3) is true because there is neuroscientific evidence that some
particular moral intuitions track morally irrelevant features of the situation
(e.g. the proximity of the harm).
•
•
Response: This doesn’t discredit the method of reflective equilibrium,
it’s an example of it at work. We come to reject an intuitive moral
judgment (e.g. that causing harm in an up close and personal way is
worse than causing harm from a distance) because we find it less
intuitively plausible than the alternative (e.g. that though proximity
may be psychologically relevant, it is not morally relevant).
“Singer appeals, precisely, to our intuitions, in asking us to see that
directness of harm is morally irrelevant. The argument from
neuroscience plays no role at all in this part of his argument” (p. 305).
16. Responding to Haidt
• Levy argues that because moral dumbfounding is inversely
proportional to Socio-Economic-Status, the deflationary
argument fails. The higher one’s education level the better
able one is to rationally justify one’s moral judgments and the
less likely one is to find victimless transgressions wrong.
17.
• Further, the fact that one lacks a ready justification (for some
particular moral judgment) inside one’s skull does not entail
that the judgment doesn’t amount to knowledge. Here Levy
returns to the theme with which he began the book: the
extended (or at least embedded) mind.
• My belief that “force equals mass times acceleration” amounts
to knowledge even though I’ve totally forgotten what I learned
in my high school physics class (and so lack a ready
justification inside my skull). This is because knowledge and
justification can, Levy argues, be socially transmitted:
knowledge is, fundamentally, a social enterprise. And the
same, he thinks, is true of our moral knowledge.
• That concludes the lecture!